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Topic: Scratch built bartop (Read 10837 times)

Hi guys, Been around for a while, but mostly lurking. Started my first bartop build last week, figured I should post it up here.No idea what I'm gonna do for the theme just yet, and I'm open to suggestions.

I've been looking at bartops for about a year now, trying to pick and choose what'll work best for me in terms of design. I coudn't possibly list all of the inspirations. I don't have any plans I'm following, just kinda making it up as I go, then measuring and adjusting.

Very cool... I'm sure ya already thought of this, but make sure you have adequate airflow if you are going to stick an xbox 360 in that little box else youll be seeing the red ring in no time!

At some point, I had planned on doing a sister project to this with a 360 and a widescreen monitor, but my 360s (yes, plural) already died. I'll be using an original xbox. I have some fans that I'll be stealing from some older computers to provide ventilation.

I've been working on the control panel art and I think I've cobbled together something I can live with. Let me know what you think. Also, I'm looking for suggestions to name this.Control panel by knohbody, on Flickr

Yes, the speakers will be on the CP, planning on doing DK style slots for the speakers up in the corners.

The area above the monitor will be for the marquee... which I don't have any ideas for yet. Once I have a name, I'll work on the artwork for the marquee and have it printed out. The marquee will be sandwiched between two pieces of 1/8 plexi, then backlit by LEDs.

I'm not planning on putting plexi in front of the monitor. Its just for me and close friends to play on. If it were for my little brothers who are half my age and are hard on electronics in general, I'd be putting 1/4 inch plexi over the monitor and CP, and would have found a different place to put the speakers. (i.e. not somewhere a drink can be spilled on them.

I've also decided that the CP will hinge forward, and will be secured on the inside with some control panel strikes. My dad currently has our saw and drill, so I'm trying to focus on the art side.

Progress is slow right now due to work being crazy.I was unable to get the slots the way I wanted them for the speakers, so I designed some grills and a couple other parts which will be laser cut acrylic. Pictures when the parts actually get here.I've got the speaker holes cut out, but need to recess the face of the speakers a bit, then when the grills arrive, I'll recess them as well.Also got most of the control panel button holes cut out. Am having a slight issue cutting the correct angle for the front part of the control panel. The top angle needs to meet the CP so that it can be glued securely, as this part is where it will be hinged.Some parts have been acquired: LED tape came in; suitable fan came from a busted tv at work, buttons and joystick scavenged from a different project. IMG_0123[1] by knohbody, on Flickr

Firedance: I looked at the plans you were going to use from http://bartoparcade.katorlegaz.com/ when "planning" my bartop. Then I started adding stuff that I wanted, and blatantly ignored any and all plans when I started cutting wood. Not that I recommend ignoring plans... Just how I tend to work.

Haruman: The joystick layout is based on the Sega Astro City cabinets. I used the template found on slagcoin, and tested it out on my last project..... which I'm gutting for this one. The layout is fairly comfy for me, but I don't have gigantor hands.

Firedance: I looked at the plans you were going to use from http://bartoparcade.katorlegaz.com/ when "planning" my bartop. Then I started adding stuff that I wanted, and blatantly ignored any and all plans when I started cutting wood. Not that I recommend ignoring plans... Just how I tend to work.

Planning is for women. Keep freeballing that bad boy.

Logged

"He lives down there in his valley,The cat stands tall and green,Well, he ain't no prize, and there's no women his size, And that's why the cat's so mean"Toxic Arcade, my first build

My girlfriend's brother just returned from Afghanistan and swung by. He had asked me to make him an arcade controller for the 360 a while back, which I unfortunately let sit half finished in our spare room for a couple of months. So when I got a call from my girlfriend saying he was on his way, I finally got around to putting it together.

Here's a picture of it. He's a street fighter fan, and wanted the layout of the original, with the extra buttons for SF4.I hacked a 360 controller (madcatz... non common ground... wires everywhere) made a box out of plywood and 2x4s that I had lying around, and worked on the art.

I found a scan of the cpo decals from the champ edition (I think) and vectorized it, adding in the extra buttons and had it printed through John from Basement Arcade Grafx a while back. They came out pretty nice.

Only issue I had was not being able to properly finish the bottom of the control panel. It's still kind of rough, but he's happy with it.

Ok, I got my laser cut stuff in from ponoko! It's white acrylic. Speaker grilles and front control panel.IMG_0130[1] by knohbody, on FlickrIMG_0130[1] by knohbody, on FlickrThe part that's peeled away on the front is etched into the plastic. I'm keeping the protective coating on so I can give the etched part a coat of black.Second pic shows the speaker grill with the protective sheet off. Glossy white. Sorry about the crappy quality of the pictures... iphone and low light....I'm working on an alternative for the artwork, something a bit less character driven. Also, I think I'm gonna call it "Retrostream"

$13 something plus 10 for UPS shipping. Still less than a 1/8th flush cut bit for my router. It did take a while for them to make it, probably due to needing more jobs to process the cut. Once it was made shipping thru UPS took around 3 days to Texas.

Ok, I spent my day off trying to make a template to route the space out for the speaker grills. Me and math do not get along very well. I was trying to use a 1/4 inch router bit to make the 1/4 inch rounded corners. This.. doesn't work. I did a quick test with a 1/2 inch bit and got much better results. Moral: if you're trying to cut 1/4 inch rounded corners... use a 1/2 inch bit.Meanwhile, I've been working on new cpo art, something simpler and fitting with the text of the front panel.

Very nice. I love the modern bartop and it's sleek size with LCD/smaller computers. I built my bartop with a full size ATX board and CRT monitor and man does it look ugly compared to these stylish beautiful machines. Keep up the good work!

Love the links.What I would like is not the actually ports, but the faceplates you got made.I understand yours are custom made, and this is what I was requesting..

I designed the faceplates myself in Illustrator and had them made through Ponoko (www.ponoko.com)I took measurements of the ports, then printed them out, cut em out with an exacto knife to test the fit. The bottom squares are for xbox ports, which I really should have enlarged by about half a millimeter.I had originally wanted both snes and nes ports, but nixed the nes ones due to space.If you're interested in the ai files to use as a base to make your own, send me a pm and I can send you the file.

Marquee... printed and pasted it together, then popped it between two pieces of acrylic. The protective plastic is still on the acrylic... that's what the marks at the top are. Obviously not the final product.

Since my last update, I mounted the power switch, power cable connector, and the two 80mm fans for the outside of the case, wired up the speakers and audio amp. Also decased the xbox, mounted it to the bottom of the cab with 1/4 nylon spacers, rewired the harness to attach to an atx power supply, decased the atx power supply and mounted that in the cab.

Everything (besides the lights which i havent' installed yet) works currently, but there are some things I want to fine tune.First, I really want to get rid of the DVD drive. It's fairly useless, as it has a hard time reading even pristine discs... they play fine for about 5 minutes, then I get errors. Bleh. I installed a chip that finally came in from dealextreme, but I haven't gotten around to flashing the bios... or researching to see what bios I actually need for this chip to delete the dvd.Second, the power switch on back runs to the PSU. When I flip the switch, all the fans for the xbox come on full blast, then I have to press the power button on the xbox to turn it on. Looking at options for that and wondering if a small cap soldered to the button would do what I want.Third, currently it boots into evox, then I have to select coinops 3. I need to get it to boot straight into coinops 3. This won't be hard, I just need to find time for it.

Great to see there has been more work done! Your going to recess the powerswitch and plug, also add fangrills. Right?

Grills will be added for the fans. Not sure about recessing the powerswitch and plug. I'm leaving for about a month or so tomorrow for work. We'll see how I feel about recessing anything else when i get back.

Small update: Got a new xbox motherboard, as I toasted the last one. Got the modchip installed, put a new bios on it to disable the dvd check, so I can get rid of the bulky DVD drive. Started painting the control panel, but I have a bit to go, so no pictures yet.